When you’re undergoing an operation, it’s preferable to have a surgeon with a medical license. But an unsuspecting San Francisco woman wasn’t so lucky, going under the knife of an impostor who allegedly pretended to be a physician assistant, performed liposuction and ended up flushing the fat down her toilet.

According to the L.A. Times, the suspect charged the woman $3,000 for the surgery. He put her under local anesthesia and had her hold her IV bag as he operated while smoking a cigar. The woman suffered an infection and had to undergo another procedure to recover.

The suspected fake doctor could be locked up for as many as 12 years and faces charges that include practicing medicine without a license, false impersonation and a version of assault.

Patients looking for bargains should check out the doctor’s credentials and read up on any complaints filed against him.

Be creative. Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use Pop-Tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon. And remember, if you’re not sure about something, rub it against a piece of paper. If the paper turns clear, it’s your window to weight gain.

Dumb question – is $3000 for liposuction really that much of a bargain? All surgeries are expensive, of course. But you don’t need to go under full anesthesia, and the puncture site is only a couple inches wide. As far as surgeries go, you’re not using that much equipment, either.

Good point. More regulation would have definitely prevented this criminal from breaking the law. He probably has a “only break a few dozen laws at once” ethic, so if we added a LOT more regulation he’d be totally reformed and not scamming people.

So you think more regulation would have prevented this? If only there were more laws, this would have never happened? I assume that you do since you think less regulation = more criminals, ergo more regulation = less criminals.

Given all of the power in the world, what regulation would you enact that would have prevented this fake doctor from ripping off this woman? What is the new law that this criminal would not dare break?

Ah, the old “If there were no laws there would be no crime” argument. Less regulation does not mean less unethical behavior. More regulation doesn’t mean criminals are less likely to take the risk. Enforcement of regulations could have had some effect on whether this guy got far enough to perform 1 or 2 procedures. We need more enforcers/regulators or the laws we already have.

It’s like with immigration. We don’t need more laws, we just need to enforce the ones we have (including punishing business owners that knowingly hire illegal workers).

It’s like with cell-phone/driving laws. We didn’t need them because we already had laws about distracted driving.

Unfortunately, law enforcement continually sees cutbacks because people think we need smaller government.

Things go wrong: people make mistakes, people commit fraud. We can deal with the wrongs through the courts, or through regulation. Contract law can typically be settled in a court, with restitution. Or, you hit my car, you caused $22,000 in damages, you pay $22,000 to compensate me. Medical malpractice, not so much. It’s not like a court can order a doctor to reattach a mistakenly-amputated limb, or undo the effects of unsafe radiation exposure from a poorly calibrated CT scanner, or bring a dead child back to life.

Courts, or regulation. If you want less regulation of the medicine, you must be prepared to argue that the courts are a better means of safeguarding our interests.

There was a serial killer in England that got discovered after he was flushing parts of his victims down the toilet. Apparently the plumber who came in to fix it found pieces of flesh clogged in the pipes and immediately contacted the police.

The best part is that she knew working out and eating right could also remove her fat. Once she recovers, she will return to her standard eating and workout (non-existent or insufficient) habits and find herself with more fat to get sucked out.

I like the part where the doctor comes over to her house to flush the fat down the toilet, and she didn’t think anything of it *until* she started to suffer the ill effects of this surgery. Some people are just too stupid to be alive.